Don't Be Alone
by Dobby's Socks
Summary: Clara wants to get home for her date tomorrow night, leaving the Doctor to ponder just how alone he really is - if he is at all. Set before "Listen" with mentions of Clara's beginning relationship with Danny, but no major spoilers.


**Ok, so I'm back with a first try at writing for Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor. As stated in the summary, this is set sometime before "Listen", though it references and hints at events and concepts in the episode itself. Here goes nothing, and I hope you enjoy!**

**Dobby's Polka-Dotted Sock**

**Don't Be Alone**

"A date?" The Doctor wrinkled his considerable brow. "What'd you go and get one of those for?"

Halfway around the console, Clara huffed and rolled her eyes. Of course he saw this as a bad thing. "Because I wanted one, maybe?"

The Time Lord seemed to consider this, but was soon shaking his head. "Can't see why. You've been to one, you've been to them all."

Clara bristled, rising to her coworker's defense. "Doctor—"

"Time Lords don't need dates."

"You haven't even met him!"

The gray-haired alien actually looked up from the controls at that, something she'd said apparently amusing him greatly. "Oh, it's a him now? Given him a name yet?"

She spluttered at the mocking tone. The Doctor wasn't the type to cast those kind of aspersions, and something about the line his questioning was taking had her feeling they were going off the rails of normalcy. But her irritation won out as it had been lately and she simply replied, "He's got a name already, thanks."

"Who does?"

"My date! The nice young man I'll be having drinks with tomorrow night," she burst out.

"What, you mean you're going out on a date?" The Doctor was moving past confusion and onto incredulity now. Clara just wanted to rip her hair out.

"Yes!" She practically cried. "That is typically what is meant when someone says they've got a date. Why, what did you mean?"

"That you'd got yourself a date," he reiterated, like that made it any clearer. He went up a level to one of his chalkboards and began scribbling something away, absentmindedly continuing over his shoulder, "You humans will get yourselves anything; wild animals you sponsor, stars you own, why not dates?"

"Why would I even do that?" She asked flatly, resigned to this conversation. It was probably her fault for telling him not to bother her tomorrow for anything short of an emergency. Tempting fate, that was.

"But it's good you didn't," the alien turned back briefly to point at her in acknowledgement, then went back to gazing at the board. "No need to confine yourself to one single date, Clara, we've got plenty more."

"Right," she agreed, taking the stairs up to stand beside him. "So, if we could maybe head back sometime soon?" She was hoping to get a full night's rest in, at any rate.

"Do you want me to meet him?"

Clara blinked. "Sorry?"

The Time Lord cast her a sidelong glance. "You said I hadn't met him yet. So do you want me to meet him?"

"Doctor," she began warily.

"I think I should," he stated.

"Well, I don't," she said, injecting a bit of a laugh, nervous as it sounded. He'd met the Maitlands, he'd met her family—but she drew the line at Danny. Oh the myriad of things that could go wrong if he met Danny. Work and school was her nice little slice of normal in amongst the insanity that was her life, and Danny was part of that. She didn't need the Doctor sizing up her date or investigating him.

"Somebody ought to warn the poor fellow," the Doctor remarked and Clara gaped.

"Warn _him_? Just who's best friend are you?"

She was momentarily flattered he didn't even wait a beat. "Yours. That's why I'm worried for him." Momentarily being the key word.

"You're incredible," she pronounced.

The Doctor nodded in agreement, "I know, I didn't think I could get worried either. Well, we've learnt that today." Abruptly, he placed the chalk down and descended to the main platform. "So, shall I drop you off a week ago?"

"Why a week ago?" She queried, fairly certain that would be breaking innumerable laws of time.

His tone was innocent as he asked, "Don't you need to get ready?"

"It doesn't take me a week," she told him.

"Yeah, but that's when you're not trying, isn't it?"

Clara chose to say nothing and merely glared, which the Doctor took a moment to notice. He then pulled a lever to send them through the Vortex back to her flat. If she hadn't been tired enough from the day's adventure, this conversation had just about sapped her remaining strength.

But Clara paused once before opening the door, looking back at him stationed at the console. "You'll be alright?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He replied rather dismissively. "I've more than enough to do."

She looked around the control room, which to her eyes still seemed almost cluttered with chalkboards and bookshelves and little tables. "Yeah, suppose you're right." Her little smile grew as she considered her own plans for the coming evening, and she exited the ship. "See you later, then. I'll tell you how it went!"

"I can't wait." Clara didn't have to look to know he was rolling his eyes, and she simply shook her head as the TARDIS doors shut and the ship dematerialized.

"Me too, Doctor," she murmured, running her hand along the rack of clothes in her closet. "Me too."

OoO

He had nothing to do. Perhaps there was always something, but here in this moment of time that Clara had delineated as their time apart he had nothing to do.

For a Lord of Time, he seemed to have precious little control over it. The Doctor scoffed, returning to the chalkboard. He'd been parsing out some equation, hadn't he, a little calculation that had flitted into his head.

He solved it and twenty-two more before admitting, "Just passing the time." The time-traveler could of course just skip ahead—but she would know, wouldn't she?

No, it wasn't time that was confounding him. Time had never really had a hold on him, not with all the times he had cheated it. It was not the boss of him, as he'd said more than once in his life.

But Clara. "Clara, Clara, Clara," he tsked with an irritated shake of the head.

Clara was the one who told him to drop her off so she could go to work, Clara who ordered him not to materialize on some such specific date—her date—to get her for something. She claimed they were best friends and yet at any minute she might turn to him and suddenly request to be dropped off for some such thing, because it was her job and her schedule and _it was important, Doctor_.

Was it not important that he hadn't had plans to drop her off at that moment? When had he gotten so soft in his old age?

She was gone again, but that didn't mean his life simply paused, waiting for her to reenter it like the beginning of a new act. There were plenty of times he'd willingly left her, and others, behind because something else needed doing. But it was times like this when it hadn't been _his_ idea that he wanted company more than ever.

"Don't be alone, Doctor," he intoned. Those words, or some variation, that had followed him far and wide in his life as of late. What was it they saw in him that made so many say that? "How am I supposed to do that, when all you seem to do is leave me alone?"

He waited, hands braced against the railing. No answer. The expected outcome. Nothing to be heard but quiet, the kind of quiet you _heard_. The Doctor hated quiet, perhaps more than silence. Quiet was a not-quite something. It held the promise of becoming something more, but never quite did.

People said things quietly to conceal them, did things quietly to hide it. There were many things hidden in the quiet…yes, he was strictly against it. He filled it up with the _skritch_ of the chalk against the blackboard, or the sound of his own voice.

"Talking to yourself—they say it's the first sign of madness. You can't get much madder than me. But if you talk to yourself," the Doctor murmured "who is you and who is me?"

**So that's that! I think you all can see where the Doctor's thoughts are starting to trend near the end to his theories at the beginning of the episode. Quite an interesting one, if I say so myself. I'd love to hear any thoughts on it and this piece. Thanks for reading and please review!**


End file.
